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The whole thing sounded awful, but according to him she just loved it. “Wouldn't have ...... The Transparency of Things, Rupert Spira. Ordinary Freedom, Jon ...
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of effing the ineffable”. In The Telling Stones Riktam Barry takes some of the effing out of the about nonduality, you are “buggered before you start, really.” I love this collection of hippie anecdotes, with

About the Author

its memories of VW Kombi vans, acid trips,

Riktam Barry was Born

experiences of Transcendental Meditation, and

in Australia in 1950

many, many cups of tea, shot through with

and after a troubled

nondual insight. Riktam’s no-nonsense punchy

childhood he focused

Australian style is a joy to read, as he describes

in his adolescence on

awakening -“memory is shot, buggered beyond

the aspects of the 1960’s

belief … it’s endlessly kind ... silently, gently kind”

that promised internal quiet: meditations and

and refuses to give advice, other than “Relax.

practices, gurus and promises. Driven by this,

Have more tea, walk, whatever. It won’t make any

he spent years questing in India and America,

difference, do what you like … If you like, go find

finally awakening by mistake in Santa FE in

someone awake and talk.”

2003. He funded his travels, tea and endless book

In the section of the book called ‘The Mad Bastard’s

purchases by contract teaching in the field of

Guide To Enlightenment’ Riktam sweeps away

design, technology and the social sciences and

preconception after preconception about awakening,

has recently begun a second book. He also brings

leaving it wonderfully clear that there is nothing

VW Kombi Vans back to life from time to time.

NON-DUALITY PRESS

ineffable, although he recognises that in writing

THE TELLING STONES

Read it if you like a good read.

Alan Watts said that he was “in the business

RIKTAM BARRY

The Telling Stones culminates in a fascinating account of one man’s awakening to the nature of his true self, but this is by no means the only reason to read it.

RIKTAM BARRY The Telling Stones

Including The Mad Bastard’s Guide to Enlightenment

to be done and no one to do anything. Riktam’s joy at the simplicity of life seen in awakening is obvious. “Such a roller-coaster filled

UK £9.95 US $14.95

with lively gasping nothings. I wouldn’t be dead for quids.” This book adds to the joy. Richard Sylvester - Author of I Hope You Die Soon, The Book of No One and Drink Tea, Eat Cake.

ISBN: 978-0-9566432-5-4

Spirituality / Philosopy

Safety Area: All Text, Logos & Barcode should remain inside the Pink Dotted Lines Bleed Area: All Backgrounds should extend to, but not past, the Blue Dotted Lines D NON-DUALITY PRESS www.non-dualitypress.com

n

The Telling Stones including The Mad Bastard’s Guide to Enlightenment

Riktam Barry

NON-DUALITY PRESS

united kingdom

THE TELLING STONES

First edition published March 2011 by Non-Duality Press © Riktam Barry 2011 © Non-Duality Press 2011 Riktam Barry has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the Publisher. Cover photograph by John Gitsham

Non-Duality Press | PO Box 2228 | Salisbury | SP2 2GZ United Kingdom

ISBN: 978-0-9566432-5-4 www.non-dualitypress.com

With Gratitude To thank a few of many, fi rst the inspiring word-dancers, Douglas Adams, Leonard Cohen, Russell Hoban, Richard Brautigan and PG Wodehouse. Steven Richardson for the seed that started it, and Alex Petkov who, years later, read the very dusty manuscript and hassled me till I sent it here. John Gitsham for taking the cover photograph.

Contents Max Goes To Woodstock ...................................................1 Princess Barbie and the Rajah ............................................8 Brother Peter and the Sacred Candle ...............................19 Rolex in India ...................................................................25 Short Grumpy Conversation with a Post-Modernist Kiddie ..................................................32 On Selling My Car ...........................................................36 Kombi Gothic ..................................................................40 John the Runner ..............................................................47 Not Quite the Pelopennesian War ....................................54 Sweeping Up After TM ...................................................59 Why Bother? ....................................................................64 Russ meets Rabindranath .................................................69 Wally Gets Busted ........................................................... 74 We Don’t Get Busted ......................................................79 I Take a Beating ...............................................................85 Australian Involvement in The Vietnam War ...................90 Max’s CD Player ..............................................................98 The World Doesn’t Work ...............................................104 Get A Job ...................................................................... 110 Athena and Carmel ........................................................ 113 Why Bother (2) ............................................................. 118 Foul Pal Al Gets Hit By the Psychic Bus ........................120 Letter from My Father ...................................................125 I Can See Why They Call It Ecstasy ..............................128 Here Be Dragons ............................................................ 132 A Word to The Enlightened ........................................... 137 A Peace Sign in California ............................................. 145 vii

Before I Forget ............................................................... 148 The World Went Right On Without Me ........................160 Further............................................................................168

THE M AD BASTARD’S GUIDE TO ENLIGHTENMENT Words ............................................................................ 173 What’s It Like? .............................................................. 176 What Should I Do? ........................................................ 178 Meditation? ....................................................................180 The Body? ...................................................................... 182 Where Is The Mind In This? .........................................184 Then What’s The Difference? ........................................185 I Have a Guru ................................................................ 187 New Age Movements .....................................................189 Why Talk Then? ............................................................ 191 I Am an Alcoholic...........................................................194 Drugs .............................................................................195 Irrelevant Advice ...........................................................198

viii

MAX GOES TO WOODSTOCK I’m always a bit sad to have missed the moments that have become the centres of hippie memory, but although the wave broke a little later in Australia we didn’t really miss anything relevant. The entire impetus for the rejection of the straight world’s bathwater and babies was the same media input in the whole of the western world.

I

love to visit Max. His house is perfect. A stone cottage with small windows, not too tidy outside with its random wood-heap and falling tin shed, but stepping inside is like getting out of a time machine set for the mid-Sixties. There are pretty little found objects catching the light on the windowsill, sari curtains, wooden surfaces everywhere, all the colour of honey. The chairs are square wooden affairs, each painted a different pastel colour. Sometimes a plain tablecloth, but mostly, like today, a clean wooden table top. There is always a pot of tea to be had. So we have one. There is an unstated conversational convention here that keeps a stream of consciousness going forever. Max simply starts talking wherever he left off last time. “I nearly went to Woodstock,” he says, in a slow, mellow voice, a considering-things-in-the-background sort of sound to it. Last time I visited him, there was a friend with us who was living near Woodstock at the time but didn’t bother going. He had told stories of his neighbour who had arrived there several days early and camped for the duration in her 1

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Volkswagen Kombi. She had been hassled from day two by people begging for water, and robbed of most of the van’s removable contents when she stayed away overnight – nearer the stage. The whole thing sounded awful, but according to him she just loved it. “Wouldn’t have missed so much positive one-purpose collective consciousness for anything.” The young of the Sixties were cursed with the huge contradiction between the world events of the day as depicted on their brand new graphic television, and the values insisted on by their parents. It was all a bit much for some, and from the rejection of straight world, its madness and constraints grew the field of vast possibility. I never feel confident that Max is telling the truth, but it’s always a good story so I don’t insult him by wondering this aloud. “I was in Afghanistan about three months before, camped near the mountains, waiting for a bloke to meet me for a little business.” “Ah, business, Max,” I reply in that special affi rmative, get-on-with-it voice. “I wasn’t buying dope, mate; I had a few rifles to sell, early Kalashnikovs. This American bloke I was with had bought them at a market, with my money mind you, that sort of committed me to helping him sell them.” Jesus, Max is a gunrunner! He just looks like an old hippie. “We had a lot of faith then, man. What we did was wander into the mountains looking for some bugger to buy these guns. We ran out of food in a couple of days. The Yank said he was going to a music festival after the money came. Woodstock in New York State, via Kabul and London. I was a bit interested so I decided to go with him. He left sometime that night, must have walked. I still had both the camels in the morning. The guns too.” 2

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Max is telling this story in a monotone, slow and careful. No dramatic intonation, no emotion, only a little grin and nod between sentences. This is why I can believe him. He fits my idea of an old Australian storyteller. No campfi re, no bush; it all happens in little kitchens with tea and a smoke. The cat comes in, sits on my lap and starts to purr. I pat. We have more tea. “When I woke up, there was another camp about two hundred yards away, a lot of people, noise and camels, even a fi re. I was a bit worried; I thought they might have killed the Yank when he went for a piss. I sat there wondering what to do with these rifles and no food when this fantastic smell of fresh coffee hit. I was going to introduce myself to next door when someone came up, no English, pointing at me and at the empty cup he was carrying. I reckon they took pity on me huddled in a blanket. So I went over.” I have to take a leak. Tea. Everywhere you go in this time warp there is tea. I reckon the strongest bladders in the world must belong to hippies. Max, for instance, never goes. Maybe he’s got a bag. I’ll ask. I’m not having another smoke, that’s for sure. The toilet is perfect too. White paint on walls of stone, textured with dust. The cistern is attached high on the wall with a chain. On the end of the chain, the large knob from a brass bed. I flush. Arriving back in the kitchen I am overwhelmed by the need to explain to Max how I am seeing his house and where it fits in my personal anthropology. I sit down. “Always good to see you, man,” I say. Max looks up from rolling another joint. “Yeah, you too.” We smoke again, the cat settles on me once more, and starts to gently push its claws in and out of my leg. Max is talking again. I look up and see that he has made more tea. 3

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“There was only four of them, but they were happy, loud, Middle Eastern brothers, you know. The oldest one, Sam, spoke English better than me. He asked how come I was there. I told him I was on my way to Woodstock. When they found out it was a music festival, they got excited and started bringing all sorts of weird instruments out of cloth bags. We all had a smoke from the biggest block of hash I had ever seen, then played and sang most of the day. Shit, that was killer smoke.” Max lights the joint again, takes a Rastafarian size toke and passes it to me. I smoke and he goes on. “We stayed there the night. Next day I spoke to Sam about the guns. He knew a guy in the mountains. I didn’t want to go, so two of his brothers left us, grinning and promising lots of dollars. I knew I wouldn’t get dollars, only westerners pay in dollars. Sam, me and Mustafa….” I laugh. “No, dead set! That was the bugger’s name – nice bloke, too. We all went to Kabul to wait for the brothers… fuck you; I’m not telling you their names.” I look up to see Max is grinning. I was worried – thought I had rattled him. Not so. “Sam’s house was great. I could never have found it without him. Way down in that end of town that you’d be too scared to go to if you weren’t local. I got fed, we smoked a lot of very fi ne local hash and somebody bought my camels. I was very happy. I had money even if the nameless brothers didn’t front.” I give Max the last of the joint and he grabs a leather thong hanging around his neck and pulls a roach clip up from under his shirt. I haven’t seen anything like it for years. This one is a beauty, a little slip collar; it all looks like silver. In one seamless movement Max pops the end of the joint into it, reduces it to nothing with one breath, fl icks the roach into 4

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the ashtray and drops the clip straight down his shirt again. I feel like an archaeologist. “They did, of course. Hardly anyone ripped you off then. It was before.” I was puzzled. “Before what, man?” “Shit, before everything. There weren’t any tourists at the edges of the world then, all the cultures were still different and just interested in each other. The biggest thing was there was hardly anyone anywhere. I reckon the thing that we missed that did us and all our dreams in proper, was that nobody knew how crowded the planet was going to get. That’s why I live out here. This is a great country. Not many people, nobody shoots at you, and much as it would like to, the government is still not throwing people into jail for disagreeing with it. All this because since the Sixties, the population of the world has more than doubled. The resources are the same, so a nice life is harder to get with all the extra people crawling about.” Max gets up and goes to the tall cupboard. This is as passionate as I’ve ever heard him; he isn’t sad, but clear that the place that he knew is no longer there. “There’s less stuff for everyone now and they are getting meaner all the time.” He takes a bottle of red wine down from a shelf. I am defi nitely here for the night. “Anyway, it wasn’t like this before. I made a fair bit of money on the guns and decided to get some more and sell them on. No need to hurry, the woman up the road kept bringing me food, we got to be lovers, and all of us were one big happy family. Woodstock was still nearly three months away, I had an upstairs room with a view over the Market Square, and there was always a nice breeze. Rabhia and me were having a ball and there was more hash than I had ever 5

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seen. I didn’t have to do anything; I just paid a little rent.” We are drinking now. I hate to mix my intoxicants, it gets confusing. Max, however, is without any such puritanical viewpoint. “I learned to speak a fair amount of Pashto during the next weeks. Me and Sam went on a gun run. We used his camels so he took extra money, and we all smoked Afghani hash after dinner every night.” I can see where this is going. Max pours more wine for us both. He drinks almost the whole glass, swallows, and says with deep conviction, “Where else in the world can you get wine this good for ten bucks? Nowhere, man.” It is good. I want to know why he left Afghanistan. I have known Max for thirty years and during the early part there was no real trouble there. I ask him. “That was really sad, man. Apparently when Sam and I went to the arms market we were seriously imposing on someone else’s business territory. Once, okay, but we lifted the quantity to a proper profit-taking number on that second trip. The bloke who had the franchise was looking for us. Sam called a house meeting. I decided to leave the country and after I was gone Sam would tell the proper criminals about the westerner who didn’t know any better.” He stands up and takes off to the toilet. I pat the cat and listen to the crickets outside. This is good. I am stoned, at ease and have a little wine in me. I hear Max flush the toilet and sit upright with a start. He comes in and sits down with a sigh. “She wanted to come, but was too scared to leave Kabul. She was such a beautiful woman. I still wonder if I couldn’t have just taken a beating and stayed.” Max has tears. Not proper, but his eyes are wet. I say, “Oh man, I’m sorry.” He smiles. “Shit, man. Who hasn’t got a lost great love?” 6

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It’s properly dark now, so we fi nish the wine and cook. Pasta – thank God it isn’t fried brown rice. After we eat, we have another joint and sit on the old lounge chairs with tea. “So where did you go?” I ask. “London, on my way to Woodstock. I ran into the American guy at the airport. He’d changed his mind in the name of not supporting any nasty capitalist enterprises. He’d also started shooting up since I last saw him.” Max turns and looks directly at me. “Do you know any junkies from then, still alive?” I have to say that I don’t. Lots of old friends come to mind, all gone. “He’s probably dead too,” says Max. Shit, I think. This is a real hidden tragedy; all the junkies I ever met were sharp – they had to be or they went to jail fast. They were intelligent people who might have added something of real value to the culture. Like war dead, just names – but real and talented in memory. I am feeling a bit maudlin when Max puts another joint in my hand and says, “Come on, man, they couldn’t stay, or they would have.” “How come you didn’t get to Woodstock then?” I feel a very strong need to know and hope for a short answer. “I still had some of the hash from Kabul. I thought I had better have just a bit to relax before I got on the fl ight to New York. So I spotted it on the end of a fag in the dunny at Heathrow, came out and sat down until the next day. Missed the plane altogether.” “Yeah, that can happen,” I say. Max nods slowly. “I took it as a sign.”

7

PRINCESS BARBIE AND THE RAJAH As a generation we were the least prepared for aging ever. As time passes all kinds of catharsis and traumatic behaviour is being seen as our generation desperately jumps toward anything we see as helping us through this very dark night.

W

e are going to India again. My old mate Ross and me, belatedly off to do the guru experience. Belatedly, because it’s 1992 and we are going through Bombay to Poona and Rajneesh Ashram. We are at Ross’s house, in the kitchen, doing one of my favourite bonding rituals. On the way here I have purchased a six-pack of jam-fi lled Lamingtons coconut cakes and a tub of cream to drown them in. We are now eating three each from a plate, with garage sale cocktail forks. A cup of tea will follow. The phone rings. Ross gets up and answers. “Yo.” Much listening happens. He then gives our departure details, and says, “Yeah, all right. See you.” He hangs up the phone and says to me, grinning like a Cheshire cat, “You’re gonna love this, Gimpy.” We have called each other Gimpy for some years now, a sort of abuse affection thing. I know him to have an evil sense of humour, so am now worried about this happiness. “What?” “That was Kamala. She’s going to catch our flight.” I do not believe him. I don’t hate this woman; I am, in fact, always glad to see her. After about an hour in her company, however, we are always tense. That isn’t why I don’t believe him.

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“She just got back a week ago, you lying old bastard.” “No, dead set! She is booking her flight today and will get on with us if she can.” He knows I’m not easy with Kamala and is enjoying this immensely. “She’s in love with some rich Indian cherry, can’t stay away and is keeping us company on her way back to India.” “If she can,” I reply. I hope not. Kamala is in no way horrible, but she pushes my buttons because she’s a control freak. She has worked for many years selling her sexual favours to the top end of the market and has a perception of men as needy buggers who, because they all want to be in bed with her, are able to be adjusted to suit her current needs. This is never reassessed but laid over every man she knows, including the likes of Ross and me. He doesn’t care. In fact, he doesn’t seem to mind anything, but after a while with Kamala, I feel as resentful as hell about not being individually recognised. So I hope the plane is full, and say so. “Gimpy, don’t be a weak prick! She’s alright.” “No mate, I cannot handle her. I always want to throttle her after about ten minutes.” “Wimp! I’m going to piss myself watching you squirm all the way to India.” He will, too. No mercy or quarter will be given. I can’t think how to avoid it so feign surliness and say, “Make the tea.” Ross retires to the kettle and tea tools. I eat Lamingtons. My relationship with him is odd. I have very little in common with him, but our backgrounds are sort of the same. Mine a small country town, now a fairly trendy place to be; and his, a city port also devoured by social change. In India, we travel together well, as the locals somehow sense a common set of values we hold with them. We all know how to behave in a village. Our adolescences were totally different. Him a real biker, drugs used to get bent, travelled around with a group; and to 9

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this day he idly points out bar windows in passing that he has been thrown through. Me a proper hippie, drugs to expand and explore consciousness, much more the social isolate – I didn’t even go to the bars, let alone come out through the window. He delivers the tea. “Is that alright old fellow? Is the nasty Kamala pushing your buttons?” I spit coconut on the floor. Peggy, his British Bulldog, snorts across, licks it clean, then looks to me – wanting more. None comes. She retires to the corner and waits. I say nothing and drink tea. Ross is almost paralysed with laughter now. “Stop it, you bastard, you’ll break something.” Ross’s body is almost stuffed from bike accidents. That’s how I met him. I lived with a good masseuse who was the only person who could stop his back pains. He came and went for months, then one day stayed back for a cup of tea. He was of the group I was estranged from in my youth, not accepted by them in any way, so I was pleased to be welcomed by him. For his part, if asked he would say, “Because you’re insane, you bastard.” I reckon the bottom line is the recognition that our timeline-sharing worlds are both dead and so we remind each other of who we are. He stops laughing and sits up. “This is great. I can’t wait!” Weeks later we are in the departure lounge. I go to the duty free to buy the large bottle of Southern Comfort I will drink in the burning ghats of India. I am very pleased. Kamala has not fronted and we are well past the requested time for arrival. New and spare batteries for everything and I go back out to sit. Ross has shifted in my absence to another part of the lounge to sit with Kamala, who has arrived in the meantime. He waves. I get our cabin baggage and go to sit with them. Kamala has already organised the collective trip to Poona 10

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from Bombay airport. She has an Indian friend with a taxi who is meeting us at the airport on arrival. Kamala is pretty. Blonde wavy hair, nice brown eyes, cute. T-shirt. There are little crows feet starting at the edge of her eyes. Ross looks old; me too. That’s what this is about for all of us, some sort of internal self-definition to link the young and the old within and hopefully give sense to whatever comes next. I have a room booked in Bombay for the fi rst night. The plane arrives at 2.00am so I have no interest in travelling again until late the following morning. I tell her this. “You’ll be excited. It won’t be any trouble to go straight through in a taxi, and you can sleep on the way if you need to,” Kamala says. I am already in trouble, my statement ignored. I therefore assume myself unrecognised, and I fi nd it very hard to stand up and insist on my own reality as valid. Kamala is the excited one and will take it as a personal insult that I don’t think what she wants is okay for me and we will have a fight. So I say nothing. Not a good start. I am on holiday, I don’t want to fight, and my stomach ties itself in the knot that I recognise as having surrendered my power. Shit! Ross asks about the Indian lover and Kamala tells us how much she misses him, what good fun they had and how wealthy he is. His surname is the same as the Indian Prime Minister and he has just secured the Nike supply rights to the whole of India. That sounds like proper money to me. I wander internally until we are on the plane. Kamala has been seated somewhere else due to her late arrival. “You having fun, mate?” Ross is next to me, grinning again, apparently truly concerned about my levity content. “Yeah, I’m all right now; thank you very much for asking, bastard.” 11

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He makes a few remarks about what a fine time we will all have in Bombay, and I remind him we are now not staying there overnight because there will be a taxi waiting to take us on to Poona. “In India at two am, how likely is that to happen?” I feel better. It is impossible to organise a late night taxi in India even when the driver is standing in front of you. “Ah, not at all likely, mate. Thank you. I am much happier now. ” At Singapore duty-free I buy a pair of prismatic binoculars, PDA and a mini-torch with the brightest light I have ever seen. The twentieth century’s gadgets are a dream come true; every potential need can be catered for. Back into the plane and to Bombay Airport, absolutely ready for the knacker’s yard and thinking of impending taxis as an event to be avoided at all costs. The torture of customs (“Do you have any gold, sir?”) is lessened since last time, as there is now a separate gate for foreigners. To the money booth to change a hundred U.S. dollars into rupees. As I join the queue, Kamala is peeved because of the delay and wants me to use the black market later. I don’t want to do this, as here I will get a certificate of exchange from the Indian Government, which is needed to stay at hotels; the black market just gives you money. She becomes angry and goes to the door leading out, then motions Ross to come with her. He seems not to notice and doesn’t move. “She’s in love, mate, very panicky about getting back to Poona to the boyfriend.” “You have to do this here so that you get the exchange certificate, otherwise the hotel won’t take your money. Go tell her to chill out, we’ll get to bloody Poona.” I am strong about what I want if the opposition is absent. The money comes and I go outside into real India. The humidity and heat as the airport air conditioning is left wraps 12

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me up like a blanket. Ah yes, and the smell; I love this place. Kamala is trying to rid herself of all the street sellers and bag carriers desperate to help and be paid. They thin out quite a bit when Ross and I turn up. We are both big and a bit rough looking from jetlag. Kamala’s taxi friend has failed to front and we are now free to go and sleep at my hotel. Good! Kamala is not happy, but is with us. As we are leaving, a well-dressed young man comes toward us, smiling as though we are his oldest friends, and greets us with the traditional Indian two-handed prayer position salute. I am a sucker for this, because of the implied respect. Its called a Namaste. The literal meaning is “I honour the light within you”. How can anyone who greets people like that have anything but the fi nest intentions? I make the mistake of looking him in the eye. He nods his head sideways, and with a voice of purest silk, asks, “Is there anything I can help you with, sir? A room? A taxi? Money changing? Smoke, perhaps?” I am about to say no, thank him and go. Anything organised at the airport gate is a bit suss. Kamala, however, moves in front of me and asks for a Poona taxi. I step away, still committed to my hotel. I would like it if Kamala catches a cab to Poona. They are a recognised service and as reliable as anything is here – a good idea I think. She goes and sees her lover sooner; and I sleep and travel tomorrow. While I chat to Ross, it comes to light that this man’s brother has a little van and will take our entire luggage and us to Poona for only 8,000 Rupees. This is clearly an ambitious claim as the taxi is only 4,000 r/-. I see my sleep vanish and instead of telling her I am not interested, foolishly begin price negotiations with him, demand details of the van, the route and the brother. At the end of several entertaining minutes we are going in a Suzuki van, “Like that one over there, sir”. 13

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A little van is pointed at. Not so old, not too bad. The price is down to 2,500 rupees and the driver will not be receiving extra payment from us. A phone call is made from Airport Security office and thirty-five minutes later a van comes. It is a ruined version of the one used as a sample. A sleepy younger man emerges, and lengthy instructions are given to him in Hindi by his brother, who then returns and says to us, “My brother will take you to Poona. No problem. Only he is to make one stop on the way, at our home.” My stomach sinks. This guy has given private instructions, it was two something o’clock in the morning in a third world country, and our lives, passports and money are to be taken to some alley – and I am not coping. We have already paid. I look to Gimpy. No response. I take nice-clothes aside and say to him, “Sir, I was going to leave this until later in my trip but perhaps you can help me. I am hoping to take back to Australia a large amount of best quality LSD. Maybe you can supply? No speed. LSD only.” A large grin comes to his face. “Yes, no problem. I do cash deal only, sir. Do you have cash?” I relax. This is where I want to be. “Yes, but not with me, sir. I will be collecting $10,000 US dollars this week from my partner who is in Poona, waiting for me.” I watch him spin out internally. “When can you return, sir?” My voice lowered, and counting points on my fi ngers I say, “Wait! I want samples and we will try together before I buy. I tell you for sure, I have had first-best LSD and if you bring me rubbish there will be trouble – see my friend here? Then, no sale.” 14

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We discuss the excellence of his contact and supplier and where I will fi nd him next week. Then he goes to his brother and speaks at length. The longer they talk the louder they yell. Suddenly it is over and we are in the van and off. A while later, Kamala, in the back with Gimpy, says to him, “See? This is not so bad. Better than being stuck in Bombay all night.” “Oh, I like Bombay,” said Gimpy. She is quiet after that, but squeaks as the van turns sharply to the right, away from the nuclear power plant, and up a dark alley. “Where are you going sir?” I have not spoken to the driver since we got in and am surprised at the perfection of his English. “A short stop, sir. Only to deliver a message from my brother.” I look at his face. He is angry. “How far?” I snap. “Two hundred yards only, sir.” I grab the handbrake, pull it hard, and skid the van to a stop under a streetlight. “Good!” I say. “You walk from here, two hundred yards only, deliver the message and return. OKAY?” He doesn’t argue, gets out, leaves the motor running and jogs away. I get in the driver’s seat and turn the bus around after he is out of sight. Kamala wants to know “what the fuck is going on?” Gimpy tells her, “Look… wait. We’re probably not going to die now.” I love him. He knew all the time, said nothing and left me with it. I tell them of the farcical drug arrangement, the ten grand the elder brother is now waiting for and that I suspect the driver is now informing the hard men to wait for a week and there will be heaps more money than they would have had tonight. I notice that Gimpy has his new torch in his hand. He bought the larger size. I turn back to the front, see that the driver has returned and is almost at the door. He is alone so 15

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I slip back into the passenger seat. When he is in and we have driven away, I hear the sound of the torch going into the pack and the zipper being done up. Turning, I notice that Kamala is very pale. I am totally unsympathetic. Good! I have been terrified throughout the entire episode. Gimpy slouches down and goes to sleep. I can’t. After miles of Bombay slum suburbia we begin to climb into the mountains, with unbelievable traffic and cliff edges. Suddenly we hit a monumental hole in the road, the back door flies open and all the van lights go out. Ross fl ies into the space behind the seat, grabs the luggage and pulls the doors shut. The driver hasn’t even slowed down. Again I am not coping. “Hey man, STOP!” I am verging on hysteria. He turns to me and says, “It is okay. I can see very well.” He seems to have not noticed the rear door opening at all. We have already taken a break after Gimpy prodded him awake at the wheel several times, and he has come out of a sort of truck stop from hell, very awake and confident indeed. I have no idea what he can see, but I doubt that it has much to do with what I see, which is almost nothing. I make him stop and we all take turns to play with wires in candlelight, until the lights come on. Two minutes later it begins to rain. Real rain, the tail end of the monsoon. Visibility zero. I say to the driver, “Please sir, put the windscreen wipers on.” He tells me that they don’t work, but “it is okay as he can see very well”. I realise that I am in some form or other going to do this trip with a blinded driver, so I shut my eyes and try to sleep. Gimpy wakes me later with a prod through the back of the seat and tells me that we are coming into Poona, and 16

THE TELLING STONES

that I have missed two more truck stops that have made the driver very aware. Kamala is giving directions to the flat of a friend of hers where we could wake him up and stay. “What time is it?” I ask. “Around five.” I lose it. This is too much. “Look Kamala! This whole poxy episode has been to slake your desperate need to see someone ten hours earlier than we could have done it in comfort. There is no way I’m going to piss some stranger off by waking him up at five AM in demand of a bit of cold floor to sleep on, have stiff joints when I wake up, then get shitty food instead of breakfast. First we go to the Blue Diamond Hotel, I book into a room, and you can do what you like.” I feel better. I am going to my hotel room at last. I tell the driver to take us to the Blue Diamond. He knows where to go. It is a top end, well-known hotel. Kamala asks Ross what he is going to do, and he says he would rather sleep in a hotel room. She gets pissed off. “You two didn’t have to come. You might as well have stayed in Bombay.” I don’t know how to deal with this. She is right. I would rather have not come; I just didn’t have the bottle to bail out, and that’s not her fault. I’m not confused for long, though, as Gimpy says, “He’s a wimp. I don’t care much what I do, but where do you think you would be now, if we hadn’t come? Anyway, my back is fucked and I want a hot shower.” She shuts up and I manage to get past that without taking any responsibility for my part in it. At the hotel, we book in, and a young man in a turban and matching khaki uniform takes our luggage upstairs. The driver has demanded an extra payment for himself. I give him a hundred rupees and he curses me in Hindi. I think he is going to throw the money away, he is so angry. I go back inside and follow my luggage up to the room, 17

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where I fi nd Kamala in tears on the bed. She has been on the telephone to the rich lover and been told in no uncertain terms by his parents that she is not welcome. We have all been around India long enough to know that she would be risking life and limb if she went there. Ross is in the shower already, so I am left to deal with this without him. I am pissed off. All this aggravating bullshit for a failing love affair. I turn to Kamala…shit, she looks miserable. A wave of release comes on me and I am left feeling very sad for her. She is almost at the end of her professional life, not so cute anymore; and has made no provision for this part of her life at all. She has seen this guy as a way through the dark – and now nothing. She might really be in love with him as well. She is in serious strife. I hug her, say I am really sorry, and send for coffee and breakfast. Ross comes out of the shower and I bring him up to date. We eat, and hold Kamala’s hand for about an hour in between her convulsive tears. As soon as she can she calls a taxi and leaves. “Jesus, Gimps,” I say. “What’s real here? I hated her two hours ago, then I was really sad, now I am just tired.” He laughs. “We live bullshit all the time, mate. Just stop thinking about it and get some sleep. You look bloody terrible.”

18

THE MAD BASTARD’S GUIDE TO ENLIGHTENMENT

WORDS

C

ongratulations on getting past the title. The contradiction in words is an important thing to see. And disregard. I don’t like words all that much in this arena. They bring visitors. Enlightenment, for instance, is a bit like the pied piper. Thousands of children following. So I won’t use it again. Awake will do instead; less preconceptions of appearance and behaviour, location or anything else. I would have to say, if you asked, that it has always been like this. Although I know that I can point to a time, place and apparent person that something appeared to have happened to. It is impossible to speak on this and be clear; it is beyond words, more the thing that words arise from, the thing that experiences words. Thing? No, it isn’t. But the truth is, it has always been like this. For you too. Everyone looks already awake, so some small mistake is being made, it seems, in the name of going somewhere more comfortable or holy. I see trying and effort, physiological purifying efforts, ritual, calming techniques, witnessing, soul-mating, all the stuff, and every last bit of it is playing on endless consciousness, already awake, already home. There is no-thing outside. Beyond means beyond. Infi nite is not something that excludes anything. That’s right – nothing is excluded, nothing is outside. Now don’t forget that for the time being. Words and ideas are not the enemy here, there isn’t one, there isn’t a path or a destination, and you are already done. 173

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You exist as you are and have the experience you have. Neither acceptance nor denial will help or hinder. Do you notice a Whitmanesqe style of contradiction here yet? Well, really, the moment this is subject to explanation, you’re fucked really. It doesn’t go there. Most people seem to live in a world of descriptions, directly experiencing the world, and then in less than a nanosecond whatever is being experienced has a name. There ends direct experience. The name serves to separate this experience from self, enabling all sorts of stuff to happen. As soon as the name is in place, a set of ideas arise and then there is a story, for instance; I fell from height when young. The experience called height and edge brought the story of injury and fear forever. These arrangements exist in us all. Stored neatly in physiology as memory and body responses. They occur with appropriate ‘external’ stimulus and some attempt to re-arrange reality follows. A recipe for total misery: “I will be fi ne if the world changes.” What problem is there in this? None really, all is inside consciousness, all part of the infi nite play, but the moment is missed. Instead, the story lives as ‘you’ and you seem obscured by the story, grown from a description – and the joy of this very moment is obscured. Although what is not okay about the experience of a story? It is okay. It is perfect. If one doesn’t freak out and seek happiness through trying to rearrange the real. Keep it if you want. Give the book back. Have a cup of tea. Best advice ever. Give up. Because, when this moment is not accepted for what it is (Stop! Don’t go off and try to accept – that’s bullshit), then you have judged from the past and purchased the ideas of better in the future. What happened to now? All gone via conditioning, ideas 174

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and physiology. This particularly includes the ideas around the E word we are not saying anymore. But this silliness stands fi rmly on language. Our labels. Look in the dictionary, our experience of the world is made of its contents. In the beginning was the word indeed. The beginning of illusion. What to do? There isn’t anything to do. It is already perfect, it is what it is, and the rest is a story. Even the story is not a problem, Buddhas trying to be Buddhas is as much real as anything else is; it’s all in the non-box. But it is a story. With boundaries. And when the focus is there, the boundless is not seen.

175

WHAT’S IT LIKE?

I

t’s not like anything. Sadly, sounding like everyone else that speaks on this, I go on. I will say some stuff. It’s quiet. No more dialogue chatters in the mind, all vanished. It seemed like bullshit if I focus on ‘before’, but it stopped. In a nanosecond. Less. It doesn’t inform behaviour. Yes, that’s right, it does not inform behaviour. More a sort of non-influence really, a noticing that certain doings, based on stories, are pointless, so they don’t happen. This not happening is noticed in retrospect, mostly by other people. Everything is visually the same, seeing the same things everywhere as always, and there it is, just is. This gives a sort of non-motivation status really. Not that I don’t do things, more that they get done, by nobody. Ambition, ha! I see typing now, for instance; it happens and that’s all. Nobody in here in the terms that I vaguely remember defi ning self. Memory is shot. Buggered beyond belief. Going shopping requires a list or supermarket-ness is happening. No idea what for, even the what for is not there. Linear simply doesn’t function in a regular way. Everything gets done it seems, but just done, by nobody. There is the centre of it really. Nobody is in here. That is the reality. Mind, physiology and language used to collude, and throw an illusory story of self on the screen of consciousness, but not now. Consciousness couldn’t give a fuck of course, it is there for anything, and these other three have an internal agreement that there is reality in their dance. So 176

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a sort of stuckness appears to be happening. Like a feedback loop. I sleep like a log. I always did, but now, when I close my eyes, I see nothing. Like a pregnant golden blackness. Waking up is like the world switching on all in a flash. There it is. It isn’t, and then it is. I am still doing the same stuff. Because, well, things happen. Not really, but I still do the same work and have the same car, clothes and like that. Because I know them. There is nothing, the old self is no more. When the world knocks on my door, the form instantly goes on like an old T-shirt. Convenient. The form lacks the meat on the bone it had, but keeps the world easy, so it stays, all by itself. “You’re the same, but different.” Yep. It has a quality. Sort of. I hear of universal love and lots of other beaut words, but my experience is of a complete and endless kindness about it somewhere. Not with manners, but silently gently kind, that’s all. Apparently you can see it. To me that means it is familiar in you, recognition of your own emptiness. Nice. Kids like it. Especially babies. It is familiar. Like a dear old friend.

177

WHAT SHOULD I DO?

W

ho? Nobody there to do anything. Nowhere to do it. No-one to do it to. Or with. To go where? For what? In this sense the whole pursuit will drive you nuts. So don’t do anything. This experience is just that, experience. Not for the mind, it can’t have it. Not that mind is the problem; the mind is what it is, the rest is a story. The body too, so yoga is hopeless as a technique of arrival, as there is nowhere to go. It functions well if you want a nice gentle exercise regime. So relax. Have more tea, walk, whatever. It won’t make any difference, do what you like. I got talked into it. Words inside like a splinter, and other words like the needle to slip it out. Then both are unnecessary. If you like, go fi nd someone awake and talk. That seems nice. Just keep mucking around with it, sometime you will get it. The tiniest shift. It is there already. In between, sort of. But not like that at all. You will see, it can’t be told, it isn’t separate; where else can it possibly be, but right here. Now. (Stop trying to be here now.) It happens by itself. Trying is a story that says you are separate and that is obvious crap. Easy isn’t it? Has anyone said nihilism yet? Another word. Go write a book with it. There are times that it seems easier to re-focus. Null times, crisis times. If you fi nd yourself driving, sliding sideways toward a tree, the mind is fucked. It simply stops. The body does what it does and there it is – direct experience.

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Sink gently into it like a nice bath when it happens. Not with effort, just gravity... I can’t tell you how everywhere it is. How obvious. How, well, omni-everything really. I don’t imagine mind likes hearing this at all, no edges, no descriptor, no box it fits in, and it has got to smell like death. It isn’t, but the mind is thick, so it imagines bullshit. It is in the job specifications. The world provokes this experience often; it is made of it utterly, so it must be so. This moment is a treasure, the only thing that is, so it waits to be seen, to welcome home the thing that is looking.

179

I HAVE A GURU

I

always want to say, when I hear this, “I have a Mitsubishi.” But that, while true, isn’t helpful. The guru thing is so tricky, I look back and see people in guru positions in the world who were so kind to me, so loving and special. I am grateful for their presence in the world then, and when I see them now I am always glad. But when I woke up, it wasn’t them. It was me. I saw. It happened, and the veil fell. For all my gratefulness for the kindness, I look now and see that I might as well have been at the beach looking. Or anywhere else. It was a quiet and meditative time, gentle in so many ways. But it is no more or less awake than anything else. There is no path toward or away. No method, no science of awareness to assist. Having said that, it did make the mind quieter and life is nicer with less noise. Also surrounded by quieter minds was easier than the opposite. So as a thing to be doing I have not the slightest criticism or opinion. But if you expect to sit before someone and have them give it, or bring you even one bit closer, it is a fool’s errand. It is more digital than analogue. A yes/ no function. It happens when it happens, a happy accident. And it decides. Awake gurus expose you to presence they carry, that’s nice. It is like a reminder letter, but you pay your own bill. I have no advice on the matter of guru, or Mitsubishi, that is useful in a person’s awakening. I liked it some, and I liked 187

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cricket and tea too. Still do. None of it is separated from the thing that looks. If you want to, do it. If not, don’t bother. It doesn’t matter one whit. Infi nite is inclusive. Perfect.

188

NEW AGE MOVEMENTS

I

am staying with a friend, there is a gardener who came in for a break and asked for help with the coffee machine, I said I would and started to turn the familiar switches; she said “You’re a Scorpio aren’t you?” It must be clear to anyone who looks, that the world doesn’t work as society promised it would. What people do with that is an amazing series of movies. Having noticed, most go on with it anyway and do what they can. The proper rejecters can accept that the world not working where they are is a mistake of some sort, and start to look for a system of new ideas that work. This can take you all over the world looking for greater values that cannot fail. For the intellect you can’t beat India, so subtle is the cultural thinking. The escape hatch of infallibility is time and karma. Endless things to do for many lives and a goal of true fi nality. It may be horrible now, but, later, you will be paid. It serves very nicely to allow the total poverty there to continue forever at least. For the heart, the Middle East is the go. Poets like Rumi, Hafiz, Rabia, so beautiful. Really, they are exquisite. And the practices are beautiful. But pretty arrows on a sign is all they are. The infallibility factor is a greater quest and the moral loving high ground to stand on. This doesn’t regard the spontaneous loving kindness sometimes called ‘heart’ or ‘love’ that arises from awakening, which has no need to pursue, but regards the urgent ache of the subtle mind. 189

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That heart and the mind are both false masters. Pick the one that seems prettier, and easier for you to live with. Have a life. But both are not a fi nal endless silence, nothing is sure to awaken you in either. The how to live right question is truly false. Once the person involved vanishes, life happens, it is right as it is happening. Nothing else is possible. As gardeners go, this one is a great gardener. Astrology, on the other hand, looks like an entertainment to me. The ideology of any newly made small culture of knowing, pleasing as it might be, is exactly the same as the one it got rejected for. Another prison made of the same bricks. “Look at the new boss. Same as the old boss.” But it doesn’t matter. Infi nite is inclusive. Perfect.

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Non-Duality Press If you enjoyed this book, you might be interested in these related titles published by Non-Duality Press:

The Light That I Am, J.C.Amberchele Awake in the Heartland, Joan Tollifson Painting the Sidewalk with Water, Joan Tollifson Only That, Kalyani Lawry The Wonder of Being, Jeff Foster An Extraordinary Absence, Jeff Foster Awakening to the Dream, Leo Hartong Dismantling the Fantasy, Darryl Bailey Standing as Awareness, Greg Goode The Transparency of Things, Rupert Spira Ordinary Freedom, Jon Bernie I Hope You Die Soon, Richard Sylvester The Book of No One, Richard Sylvester Be Who You Are, Jean Klein Who Am I?, Jean Klein I Am, Jean Klein The Book of Listening, Jean Klein Spiritual Discourses of Shri Atmananda (3 vols.) Nobody Home, Jan Kersschot This is Always Enough, John Astin Oneness, John Greven What’s Wrong with Right Now?, Sailor Bob Adamson Presence-Awareness, Sailor Bob Adamson You Are No Thing, Randall Friend Already Awake, Nathan Gill Being: The Bottom Line, Nathan Gill For a complete list of books, CDs and DVDs, please visit:

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2011



THE A LMIGHTY M ACKEREL AND HIS HOLY BOOTSTRAPS by J.C.Amberchele The headless perspective THE ULTIMATE TWIST by Suzanne Foxton A novella: addiction, love, therapy and awakening GONER by Louis Brawley The last five years with UG Krishnamurti ESSENCE R EVISITED by Darryl Bailey Slipping past the shadows of illusion THE LOVING AWARENESS IN WHICH ALL ARISES by Rick Linchitz Dialogues on awakening BLESSED DISILLUSIONMENT by Morgan Caraway Seeing Through Ideas of Self THE LAST HUSTLE by Kenny Johnson Finding true happiness and freedom in prison THE PLEASANTRIES OF KRISHNAMURPHY by Gabriel Rosenstock Revelations from an Irish ashram DRINK TEA, EAT CAKE by Richard Sylvester Dialogues and observations of a tour in Germany

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